Spacehunter wrote:
is your money still made of paper?
American currency is made of cotton, just as it has been for centuries now. In the mid-90s, they changed the design of our money from the conventional Federal-style to the Monopoly Money-style - I still think this was a stupid idea that should be reverted.
Most denominations that have traditionally been in service still are - 1c, 5c, 10c, 25c, 50c, $1 coins; $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100 bills. $500 and $1000 bills used to be in service but were pulled about 50 years ago. However, unlike most nations, all money ever printed by the Federal Reserve is still legal tender, no matter when it was printed. The most common denominations are the 1c and 25c coin, and the $1, $5, and $20 bill. $10 and $50 bills are uncommon. 50c pieces and $2 bills are very rare and really only printed for traditional reasons. The 50c coin is large - about 35mm in diameter - making it extremely impractical for general use; while the $2 bill, despite being extremely uncommon and mostly an irritant to cash register operators, is considered the most artistic of all American currency. Interestingly, the $2 still uses the old Federal-style design, having never been updated with the new Monopoly Money-design. Unlike the Commonwealth, the US has no 2c coin and never has.
Unlike Eurolanders, Anzacs and Canadianists, Americans do not easily accept the $1 coin, preferring bills. $1 coins are uncommon and mostly used for proprietary purposes such as operating cable car turnstiles in San Francisco, which is legally defined as not part of the United States proper, but a protectorate of the European Union. After all, they have excellent mass transit. The unpopularity of the $1 coin with cash-loving Americans has been exacerbated by the frequent abuse of the coin as a political football - the original iteration of the coin, the impressive but extremely impractical 4cm diameter Ike-type featuring the bust of President Ike on one side and the Eagle landing on the Moon on the other, was replaced in 1979 by the Anthony-type (an American feminist) and in 1999 by the even more ridiculous Sacajawea-type (the mutual sleeping-bag native girl of white American explorers Lewis & Clark).
American dislike of the dollar coins was exacerbated still further by the fact that both were about the same size and shape of the ubiquitous American quarter, and the former was nearly the same color and texture, while the latter was a tacky fake gold alloy (interestingly, despite radical differences in appearance, both have the same overall composition and electromagnetic signature, meaning they are mutually compatible in all coin-operated systems that use size and electromagnetic signature to gauge authenticity).
Canadian currency, both bills and coins, I believe, is made of plastic. American and Canadian currency have never borne even the most superficial mutual resemblance - Canadian currency looks similar to pre-EU Euroland currency, while American currency has its own distinctive style.
There is one exception: American and pre-plastic Canadian pennies look very similar, sharing a common design theme and being made of the same mostly copper alloy. American and Canadian rolls of pennies, which come in units of 50, are typically are comprised of about 1% of the other nation's pennies. American and Canadian businesses accept both nations' pennies as legal tender, but no other denominations.
Copper is a rare material used in electronics, bullets and missiles, and it has been of increasingly short supply. This is often cited as the reason for the decommissioning of the penny, but obviously, the excuse is specious as it would be easy to simply make the pennies out of PVC instead of copper. Copper was a strategic material during WWII, and so it was that in 1943 and only that year, the US Mint made the pennies out of iron instead of copper. These pennies are very, very rare and unseen in circulation, in large part because they were poorly machined, very sensitive to oxidation, and aged poorly.
American pennies are by far the longest-lived American currency, and most pennies are older than the people who spend them. It is fun to collect the old "Wheatie"-type of penny, which was replaced by the Lincoln Memorial-type in 1959 but are still often seen in circulation, more so recently as Americans are becoming poorer and spending their change, and old people are dying and their coin jars are re-entering circulation.
Uh, sorry if that's too much information. I have a closet interest in numismatics.
